Dad Said It Best
“Tart words will make no friends; a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.” ~Benjamin Franklin
My father was always warning me to watch my words. If I didn’t have anything nice to say, I should just bite my tongue.
Dad was relentless in driving this point home to me, often drawing upon scripture to prove the sentiment was shared by the highest authority of all: “Pleasant words are a honeycomb, Sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” – Proverbs 16:24.
While he always appealed to altruism and morality, it wasn’t just that Dad wanted me to spare other people’s feelings. He wanted me to learn strategies for success in dealing with other people. He used “Aesop’s Fables” as a youngster’s version of Dale Carnegie’s Depression-era bestseller, “How to Make Friends and Influence People.” Its enduring premise is that you have to appeal to the other person’s needs and wants in order to persuade them to your way of thinking, or motivate them to do what you’re about to ask them to do.
In Aesop’s fable of The Wind and the Sun, the two sky powers were arguing over which of them was the strongest. When they saw a traveler walking down the road, the Sun said, “I see a way to settle our dispute. Whichever one of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak will be considered the stronger one. You begin.” So the Sun hid behind a cloud, and the cold Wind began to blow as hard as he could upon the traveler. But the harder he blew, the more closely the traveler wrapped his cloak around himself. Finally, the Wind had to give up in defeat. Then the Sun came out and shone in all his warmth and glory. The traveler soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on, so he happily removed it and carried it over his arm. The moral of this fable: Kindness is more effective than criticism.
This fable made such an impression on me, I made a personal goal to ‘warm’ difficult people in my life so they would drop their prickly defenses around me and we could become friends.
My father, who bought the Carnegie book in 1941, used its tactics as an Army Intelligence officer in World War II, when his duty was to interrogate German prisoners of war and learn the enemy’s secret strategies. One of Carnegie’s fundamental techniques in handling people was the notion that you should never criticize someone; criticism only makes them all the more defensive, and they wrap themselves up in self-justification (like the traveler being blown about by cold Wind.) Carnegie wrote, “Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a man’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses his resentment.”
Instead, he looked to American heroes like Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln for examples of diplomacy, kindness and patience. As U.S. ambassador to France, Franklin said, “I will speak ill of no man… and speak of the good I know of everybody.”
As the ‘good cop’ interrogating Nazi POWs, my father would befriend them, bring them whatever food, drink and creature comforts they requested, then proceed to ask them about their families and home towns, their girlfriends, their accomplishments, and other ego-boosting questions. Before they knew it, my father had beguiled them into sharing their secrets. Counter-intelligence won that war (and far as my father’s part in that success, no waterboarding or other torture tactics were needed)!
During this digital age, when we can share our points of view for all the world to see with the speed of a keystroke, we should pause and consider these timeless lessons regarding the negative and positive power of our words. And especially during the current coronavirus pandemic, election season and recession, everyone needs to be cut a little more slack and given a bit more grace than usual… we’re more anxious than ever before.
As Carnegie put it, “When we are dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”
“Instead of condemning people,” Carnegie implored, “let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. To know all is to forgive all.”
Kindness over criticism wins the day.
